As I am intending to tell three different stories, how I will structure these in performance is important, as I will need to ensure that there is ample time for each story and that the transitions flow together. Below is a list of the intended structure so far:
I start sat near the projection of ‘the cliff’ when the audience come in.
I stand up and talk to the audience about my dad and my holidays in Menorca.
I walk over to a set of 7 seats, laid out like a people carrier, and sit at the back of the car. I encourage the audience to sit with me.
I begin telling a story of when I was 6, based in the car. The audience member in the driving seat will be asked to put on a cap and camera case to represent my dad.
I get out of the car and pick up some ‘plant props’ and begin to scratch them against the side of the car, making the noise that happened using my voice. Lights transition from warm light to dark green.
I mime crossing the thin bridge and before I fall in, I stop and walk over to the other side of the room.
A karaoke version of Eye of the Tiger begins to play to which I sing along for about ten seconds (pretending to be the drunk man who sung it in Menorca).
I return to the bridge and fall into the Marshlands, telling the rest of the story.
Transition to next story. The lights continually fade to a harsh red throughout this story.
Tell the story about ‘the wall’. Pick up the rock prop to ‘write’ on the wall.
Transition to the final story. Lights fade back into a warm light, sounds of the sea can be heard. I hand out scripts to the audience and ‘cast’ them as different characters.
Begin telling the story of ‘the cliff’ having the audience play different characters and aiding the storytelling.
Finish final story and finish performance.
I will update my blog if there are any changes to this structure.
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Giggs, J. (2015) Mini Pinecone. Unpublished Photograph.
As my piece is starting to veer more towards storytelling, I decided to research Chris Goode and his work – as his performances are heavily based around storytelling. Though he has worked solo for many shows, he also has his own ensemble company, Chris Goode and Company.
Speaking about his process to find and create ideas, Goode said that “The process always begins in the same way: it starts in a room with some smart people and the will to create a space for a conversation. I usually have a hunch about something I want to explore… Everything after that depends on my collaborators, and the news, and the weather.” (Goode, 2011).
Below is a clip from The Adventures of Woundman and Shirley, a show that I find interesting in how it is told. The storytelling aspects used by Goode are techniques I am thinking of using for my performance. Something that I believe is particularly interesting with this performance is the level of detail concerning every movement and location:
Though he has stated that he does not always find it easy to take strong political and artistic opinions and make them into a process, he has also shared his view that theatre is a place “to create real liveable experiences of models for political and personal change”. (Goode, 2011). He also said that “Theatre can have a crucial role in reimagining our social relations. What we do all day has never felt more important”. (Goode, 2011). His work is therefore very much a reflection on his own political and artistic views.
Goode has been termed an alternative theatre maker – a term that was founded in the late 1960s to early 1970s. It’s meaning relates to a movement that opposed mainstream theatre. Alternative performances were created with a specific set of theatrical ideas that opposed the stereotypical theatrical experience. Goode’s performances therefore remove the security and comfort that audiences had become accustomed to, and asks them to think beyond what they are seeing on the stage.
Goode advises new theatre makers to stay curious about current ideas and experiences and that it is important to analyse everything – “Always be kind in the work room. Only work with people who are smarter than you and don’t mind getting naked.” (Goode, 2011). Furthermore, he says that the process should be a place of romance, lightness and acceptance. Don’t be afraid to aspire to significance. (Goode, 2011).
Chris Goode keeps a blog of his work in which he expresses his political and societal opinions: http://beescope.blogspot.co.uk/. Speaking about theatre, Goode said that he is “really fascinated by the ways in which we imagine theatre — not the content or detail of any particular instance of theatre, but more generally theatre as a practice or a social act — and the metaphors by which those imaginings get passed around, become realised as material, as architecture and infrastructure and organization.” (Goode, 2014).
Whilst I have no intentions of my performance challenging the conventions of theatre, I have been inspired by Chris Goode to consider a new method of storytelling in which detail is vital. Over the coming weeks, I am going to try writing a text on which my performance can be based – relating to my own personal experiences of my holiday. I intend to focus on every detail so that the audience can vividly imagine the world that I am describing, much like Goode’s work.
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Chris Goode Image:
Abrahams, J. (2014) Chris Goode in ‘Men in the Cities’ [Online]. Available at https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/article_small/public/thumbnails/image/2014/08/08/12/chris-good.jpg [Accessed 16 March]
Goode, C. (2011) Chris Goode: Maverick Theatre. Interviewed by E. Turney for Ideas Tap. Available from: http://www.ideastap.com/ideasmag/the-knowledge/chris-goode-interview [accessed 16 March].
Hull Truck Theatre (2012) The Adventures of Woundman and Shirley. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud5jsvC1x4g [accessed 16 March].
As I addressed in my previous post, Making a Show, a concern for my piece is that it will not be interesting for an audience. Due to this, I have begun to think about additional ways to make my piece more engaging and interesting for the audience- primarily by ‘animating’ the story. Instead of simply talking to the audience about these journeys (like one of Spalding Gray’s productions) I intend to direct incorporate the audience into the piece.
For instance, in one of my memories I was sat in a 7-seat people carrier when we drove through a thick forest-like area. As we did, branches and sharp leaves of the trees started to scratch against the car and eventually got in through the windows (in those days air conditioning in hire cars was a luxury). Everyone in the car (me, my brothers, my dad and my sister’s boyfriend (at the time) frantically tried to close the window to prevent getting attacked. How I would want to show this on stage would be to set out 7 seats and have the audience sit in them, as if they were in the car with me. When they were in the ‘car’ I would use prop tree branches and brush against the side of the ‘car’ so that the story involved the audience (by placing them directly into the action). I have also thought about creating sound effects to go with this, such as making a high pitch screech to replicate the sound of the branches scratching the car. I would also use lighting to display changes in locations and temperature- when driving through the forest I would have the lighting change from a bright warm light to a dark green, creating a clear transition of location and further involving the audience into the story.
What I call the ‘Stone Dog’. I rotated the rock in it’s eye to make it look more friendly. Presumably the eye was placed by someone else wanting to create the effect of a dog in the first place.
I may also have the audience ‘play’ the different characters in the story, for example, placing my dad’s hat and camera case on someone whilst in the car and asking them to mime driving. I am also planning to have scripts to give to the audience so that they can speak as different characters. By doing so, I want to create an intimate and engaging experience for the audience, they are not only listening to some of my fondest memories, but reliving them with me. I am considering limiting the audience to 6 people, thus creating a fun, friendly and intimate atmosphere (thereby recreating the emotions I felt whilst on my holidays for the audience).
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Giggs, J. (2015) Menorcan Cliffs. Unpublished Photograph.
Giggs, J. (2015) Dog Stone. Unpublished Photograph.
As my current idea stands, there is a concern that the stories I tell will be interesting to me but not so much for an audience. Therefore, I am beginning to experiment with how I can make my idea more interesting for an audience and thereby creating a show rather than simply forming an idea. I have begun to experiment with adding comedy to my piece, using exaggerated mannerisms and voices of my family members (as a means of showing their foibles). For example, for my father I experimented with making my voice hoarser whilst accentuating his speech patterns (particularly focusing on words and phrases that have almost become his catchphrases).
I also have decided to play with the idea of time and fading memories. As such, I am beginning to experiment with cutting and pasting different memories in random places as a means of replicating how the brain often jumps between memories and forgets other aspects. For instance, I may be talking through a memory of when I was crossing the swamp and suddenly break out into Eye of the Tiger (the version sang by the inebriated tourist). Even then the song would act as a fleeting moment, only featuring for 10 seconds- as it does in my memory. This is not only as a means of adding comedy to the piece, but to replicate sudden thought changes and how the brain associates certain memories to others. My show would not be told chronologically, often shifting between different memories and years to represent how our memories are imperfect.
I want the piece to end with the memory concerning the Cliffside. By doing so, I want to create a parallel between everyone’s memories and the stories being told, suggesting that much like the cliff, memories can only go so far- there is a limit to how much we can remember. Though we can remember some aspects of our lives more vividly than others, we can never truly remember everything perfectly, just as a cliff is never perfectly straight and often has pieces breaking away or falling off. The cliff is therefore not only a practical element of the story, but symbolic of the loss and imperfections of memory. Though I am yet to decide on how the piece starts and what the audience come into, I have thought of starting sat on the cliff and ending it in the same way- repeating the opening section at the end (again fortify the idea that memories are limited).
Memories are like a cliffside, you never know what’s gonna erode away.
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Giggs, J. (2015) Menorcan Cliffs. Unpublished Photograph.
Giggs, J. (2015) Cliffside Erosion. Unpublished Photograph.
As I talked about in one of my previous posts- AMemory of Music, I may want to include various songs that I have heard and come to love from my journeys around Menorca. I also said about placing a radio filter effect over this sound so that it would sound more authentic to how I remember it. Today I experimented with trying to make the Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger sound as if it was being played from a radio. Using the audio editing software Audacity, I applied two main effects to the music, Equalisation and a High Pass Filter. Equalisation allows you to amplify some sound frequencies whilst dampening others. This effect happens naturally on radio due to decrease in sound quality as it is transmitted. A High Pass Filter allows you to cut-off certain levels of frequency and reduces these frequencies that are lower than the set cut-off frequency. For the sake of this experiment I set the frequency cut-off quite high at 2000Hz in order to replicate the loss of sound quality found in radio. By combining these effects, the frequencies in the music are amplified and then restricted- resulting in a muffled sound. Below are the results:
And for comparison, below is the original song on YouTube:
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Giggs, J. (2015) Menorcan Rocks. Unpublished Photograph.
Survivor, 1982. Eye of the Tiger. In: Eye of the Tiger [Online]. Scotti Brothers Records [viewed 5th March 2017]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btPJPFnesV4
